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F is for Forgotten: Weighing in on America’s Forgotten Youth
by SF Ed Fund on
“Everybody has a sense of wanting to be part of something,” says Priya Kothari.[caption id="attachment_415" align="alignright" width="350"]
Through the San Francisco Education Fund's College & Career Readiness and Circle the Schools programs, students learn to connect classroom learning with real-world opportunities. Here, students at Thurgood Marshall Academic High School visit the offices of tech company, if(we).[/caption]Priya, an economist living in San Francisco, sat down with our Program Director Hanna Doerr to talk about the intersection of education and social equity. Check out the conversation on Priya’s podcast released today.Her story focuses on Jeremiah, who she met at the Old Skool Café in the Bayview/Hunter’s Point neighborhood of San Francisco.“Jeremiah had a tough upbringing. His home life was chaotic. His dad wasn’t around in the early years. His mom struggled to cope with being a parent to him and his brother. He did what all kids do at that age, what we all did at one time or another—he rebelled. He got in trouble. He played hooky from school. He fell behind. In all the chaos—the drugs, the alcohol, the gangs—he was moved to a foster home when he was 12,” she says.He was a kid from the wrong side of the street, destined to stay there, or get into crime, or go to prison, or do drugs. Not a kid who was going to graduate from high school, get a degree, get a good job. He succumbed to the stereotype of himself.”Jeremiah’s story resembles that of a number of students we serve.“They don’t have a sense that there’s a place for them after high school in the academic world and sometimes even in high school,” Hanna explains.[caption id="attachment_412" align="alignleft" width="150"]
Hanna Doerr, San Francisco Education Fund Program Director[/caption]A lot of the students the Education Fund targets are growing up in blue-collar communities where education is not the priority or even something they can strive for.Hanna learned this firsthand when she was earning her Master’s in Public Policy at George Washington University. She worked in a tutoring program, but rather than helping the students learn American history, she was tutoring them in reading. That’s when she realized these students might not even come away with the skills they needed just to function in the world.Though her experience differs far from the students she serves, Hanna says they share common barriers.“They don’t have that internal belief system that they can make it. And I think they’re just lacking in that understanding that college is hard for everyone,” she says. “The one thing I wish someone had told me was that college is hard for everyone.”
Through the San Francisco Education Fund's College & Career Readiness and Circle the Schools programs, students learn to connect classroom learning with real-world opportunities. Here, students at Thurgood Marshall Academic High School visit the offices of tech company, if(we).[/caption]Priya, an economist living in San Francisco, sat down with our Program Director Hanna Doerr to talk about the intersection of education and social equity. Check out the conversation on Priya’s podcast released today.Her story focuses on Jeremiah, who she met at the Old Skool Café in the Bayview/Hunter’s Point neighborhood of San Francisco.“Jeremiah had a tough upbringing. His home life was chaotic. His dad wasn’t around in the early years. His mom struggled to cope with being a parent to him and his brother. He did what all kids do at that age, what we all did at one time or another—he rebelled. He got in trouble. He played hooky from school. He fell behind. In all the chaos—the drugs, the alcohol, the gangs—he was moved to a foster home when he was 12,” she says.He was a kid from the wrong side of the street, destined to stay there, or get into crime, or go to prison, or do drugs. Not a kid who was going to graduate from high school, get a degree, get a good job. He succumbed to the stereotype of himself.”Jeremiah’s story resembles that of a number of students we serve.“They don’t have a sense that there’s a place for them after high school in the academic world and sometimes even in high school,” Hanna explains.[caption id="attachment_412" align="alignleft" width="150"] Hanna Doerr, San Francisco Education Fund Program Director[/caption]A lot of the students the Education Fund targets are growing up in blue-collar communities where education is not the priority or even something they can strive for.Hanna learned this firsthand when she was earning her Master’s in Public Policy at George Washington University. She worked in a tutoring program, but rather than helping the students learn American history, she was tutoring them in reading. That’s when she realized these students might not even come away with the skills they needed just to function in the world.Though her experience differs far from the students she serves, Hanna says they share common barriers.“They don’t have that internal belief system that they can make it. And I think they’re just lacking in that understanding that college is hard for everyone,” she says. “The one thing I wish someone had told me was that college is hard for everyone.”